I would suggest, as a long time observer of the railway business, that the failings described by broadgage are a reflection of a deeper malaise within the industry.
There have been two very informative reports published over the last couple of years. One was by Dame Colette Bowe in 2015,
Report of the Bowe Review into the planning of Network Rail’s Enhancements Programme 2014-2019 and Nicola Shaw’s
The future shape and financing of Network Rail published in March 2016. Both were sponsored by the Department for Transport.
Both point out the confused and unclear relationships between Network Rail, the Office of the Rail Regulator (now the Office for Road and Rail), the Train Operating Companies and the
DfT» . Shaw writes:
But solutions designed for one set of circumstances are not necessarily applicable to the next. Since the early 2000s, the world has changed at a rapid pace, and the heavily centralised and ‘top-down’ planning model of the early Network Rail is no longer appropriate in a world in which the safety concerns post-Hatfield have been overcome, where there is ongoing political devolution, where passenger and freight customer expectations continue to increase, and in which individuals expect a far greater degree of accountability and answerability from the companies and institutions that exist to serve them.
She reports on the results of a wide ranging consultation:
1.26 While by no means universally raised, there were also a number of other themes arising, both explicitly and implicitly:
• frustration with the quality or reliability of passenger railway services, and in some places a sense that private train operators abstract profit that could otherwise be reinvested into the railway;
• a perceived lack of accountability or answerability in the railway: with many respondents asking who is accountable for the railway – the government, Network Rail, the regulator, train operators, a combination of all or none of these; and
• a sense of disempowerment whereby customers, passengers and freight shippers expressed frustration that decisions are taken in places where they do not have a say and where they feel that the railway operates in spite of them – not for them. Many responses suggest a deep scepticism with the status quo and that passengers’ needs are not best represented in the current structure.
These reports are specifically concerned with Network Rail, but the detail in them suggests there is confusion and lack of clarity regarding who does what and when in a variety of different areas, including relationships with the
TOCs▸ . It is clear that Network Rail was, possibly still is, uncertain who its customers are - Shaw considered that
NR» ’s customers were the TOCs and
FOCs▸ but notes that NR sees the DfT - its owner and funder for improvements - as a customer. The DfT requires a lot of NR’s management time to service its demands. Another customer is the
ORR» which also continually requires information; NR has much less contact with the TOCs and FOCs than with these two Government bodies.
I don’t think much will change until the DfT works out what it should be doing - at the moment it is confused as to whether it is the Ministry for Transport for the country or the Ministry of Railways. In its MoR role it is so intimately concerned with the minutiae of railway operation that over the last decade and more it has removed any capability for the senior management of the TOCs to act in their interpretation of the best interests of their paying customers. The TOCs are kept in such a financial straightjacket (because of the franchising contracts which insist on a given profile of premium payment increase or subsidy reductions regardless of business conditions) they have little or no incentive to add to their operational flexibility, and therefore increase its costs, by adding more staff or equipment.
If things lower down in the food chain of any organisation don’t seem to be going well it is practically always because the targets set by top management and the directors are vague, contradictory and the incentives perverse resulting in apparently odd decisions. In a publicly quoted company this would result in an underperforming share price making the organisation a target for a takeover. This path is not available to the passenger train operators or to NR, so I only hope that the DfT can reform itself and teach itself to disentangle itself from what should be purely railway management decisions.
If this does happen one result may be that the railway business will be able to hire higher quality managers…good people do not accept being told what to do all the time and (
added in edit as it's what I meant to say all along) even more being told what they can't do.
On a positive note these two reports are by respected people so they are - I hope - evidence that these problems are being taken seriously at the highest levels. I hope that they are not simply
pro forma exercises. Change may come, but it will be measured in years, not months.
